Secretly recorded tapes show that senior Civic Platform politicians knew about the extent of VAT tax fraud in Poland.

Paweł Graś together with Donald Tusk / Gazeta Polska

The narrative of the Civic Platform party concerning the VAT tax fraud scandal has been crashed by the tvp.info news website, which published a recording of, among others, the former spokesman for Donald Tusk’s government and the former Prime Minister’s closest associate, Paweł Graś. The men discussed how easy it is to commit VAT tax fraud. Previously, the Civic Platform party seemed intent on convincing the public, that its officials had no idea about the dealings.

The secretly recorded conversation took place between Paweł Graś, the then spokesman for the government of Donald Tusk as well as Secretary of State in the Chancellery of the Prime Minister and Tomasz Misiaik, a former senator from the Civic Platform party. Maciej Witucki, a former CEO of Poland's largest telecommunications provider TPSA, was also present during the concersation.

PAWEŁ GRAŚ
“Drugs are no longer profitable at all. VAT tax fraud is.”

MACIEJ WITUCKI
“Procuring invoices is better.”

TOMASZ MISIAK
“You create a network of a hundred companies...”

PAWEŁ GRAŚ
“A hundred? You don’t have to create a hundred! The only problem is finding the right product… Today it’s gold, tomorrow steel rods, the day after that calcium and then rapeseed oil. You can do any product, literally anything before...”

TOMASZ MISIAK
“they get you...”

PAWEŁ GRAŚ
“And you end up with a problem, because even if you get them all, the entire network, you have to prove that they were doing this knowingly and in bad faith. Now try and prove, that the seventh company in the chain knew, that it was all a fraud. To get to them, you have to prove exactly that.”

TOMASZ MISIAK
“Tomorrow, I could buy computer hardware worth, for example 2 or 3 million zloty, from a guy who would bring me used, scrapped equipment worth, I don’t know... 5 thousand zloty or something. Some firms pay more, to get money from this. They give you an invoice for 3 million zloty. You get 600,000 from VAT tax, you give half to this guy, the other half goes in your pocket. Aside from that, you have bonuses from your income tax. And to catch someone doing that, you’d have to find out how he did all that and prove it.”

Dorota Kania, the Executive Produce of Telewizja Republika, argues that the secretly recorded tape proves that the scale of VAT tax fraud in Poland was known to some of the most important members of the previous government

“Officials in Donald Tusk’s government knew exactly what was going on with VAT tax fraud. The scandalous words of Paweł Graś, who was once the spokesman for Civic Platform’s government, should make it a priority for the commission investigating VAT fraud to question him. If he knows so much about it, he should share it with the commission." -Dorota Kania

A special parliamentary investigation committee looking into VAT tax fraud was launched a few months ago. It is estimated that the Polish Treasury lost between 200-250 billion Zloty, or 66 billion Dollars, through VAT tax fraud between 2007-2015.